Monday, February 28, 2011

Wendy has been kind enough to let me guest blog today to tell you about a yummy recipe I made.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes.

Of course you can make full size cupcakes with this recipe too.

Supplies:

*Yellow or White Cake Mix & Ingredients to Make Mix

*Vanilla Frosting

For the 5 dozen Mini Cupcakes I made, I used almost 2 cans of Vanilla Frosting

*Creamy Peanut Butter

*Jelly

*Filling Tip

*Decorating Tip

*Mini Cupcake Liners

Not everything is pictured here, sorry!

I first made the cake mix and lined my mini cupcake pan. Then popped the pan in the oven. I followed the box directions for oven temp and cooking time.

FYI: Because I made mini cupcakes, they took less than the 20 minutes for full size cupcakes. Just keep an eye on yours while they bake.

I used my new Dessert Decorator Plus for filling and frosting the cupcakes.
I bought mine for $14.99 at Michael's. Well worth the $15 because it had a filling tip and the decorating tips. Plus you just wash out the tube, no messy frosting bags, no frosting coming out the bottom.

Filled with Grape Jelly.

While I was baking and waiting for the cupcakes to cool, I mixed my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I took the lazy easy way out. I just used vanilla frosting and mixed peanut butter into it. There are tons of from scratch peanut butter frosting recipes on the internet so google that if you want to do it homemade.

If you go the method I used, melt your peanut butter in the microwave for 15 seconds. I had to do mine another 10 seconds, just be careful because you can burn the peanut butter.

I mixed in about 1 tablespoon of peanut butter at time until I got the right flavor. Don't worry about doing too much or too little, mix in until you have the peanut butter flavor you want.

I did about 3 tablespoons to 1 can of Vanilla Frosting.

Filling the cupcakes were super easy with my dessert decorater. I let the cupcakes cool for about 5 to 10 minutes. These being mini cupcakes, they cooled down super fast. With larger cupcakes you might have to wait a bit longer.

The directions said to insert the fill tip about 1 inch but as there were mini cupcakes, I didn't quite go down that far. These were the first ones I filled and about halfway through I learned that if I pulled the plunger back a bit before I removed the tip from the cupcake then it wouldn't leave the bubble of jelly at the top you see in the picture below. The ones with no jelly on top have not been filled yet.

The bummer about having only one Dessert Decorater tube is that I had to wait for all 5 batches of cupcakes to cook, cool and fill with jelly before I could switch over to my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I'm not a great froster so I tried to do a smooth "bubble" or "dot" of frosting. To do this, hold your tube at a 90 degree angle in the center of your cupcake and frost until you have the size frosting you desire. I think if I had backed off the tube a little before removing I wouldn't have had such a wispy tail on the end of the cupcakes.

Ta Da! Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes.

They are just like they sound, a sweet peanut butter & jelly sandwich in cupcake form.

Delicious!

Hey C.G. friends, just a quick note from me-My girls and I made these over the weekend, Leslie isn't kidding when she says "DELICIOUS". They were so yummy and my girls had a blast stuffing the centers with jelly!

Thanks so much Leslie for sharing your goodie with us! Happy Munching to you all-

Thursday, February 24, 2011

I truly believe this is going to be a blogger-wonderland event to be a part of...

Do you LOVE to create with wood?

Do you LOVE to create with a group of friends that LOVE creating too?

And do you LOVE having all those friends to bounce ideas off of and borrow from here and there?

If you answered yes, yes, and YES! Then join me for...

Wood you like to Craft? is a bloggers craft group. That's right- a bloggers craft group, open to anyone who wants to play along! Your skills can be anything, beginner to pro, it's your creative mind that matters!

So how does it work? Like this...

One of four bloggers will play hostess, she creates a project, a supply list, and a full tutorial and shares it on her blog.

The other three bloggers then share their "takes" on that same project to give you a few more ideas.

Then it's your turn! Re-create the project your way! Make it fit you and your style and then be sure to add it to the linky party for that project.

{There will be a featured highlight of some of the projects, and there are prizes involved!!! Also some of the projects will have kits available for purchase, check the site for details!}

The Wood You Like to Craft team is made up of some very impressive ladies! I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I shared this post last week over at I{heart}Naptime. If you missed it or are needing a quick and easy St. Patrick's Day decoration give this a try...

This went together in under an hour! Super easy with easy to find supplies, so let's get busy.

You will need:

A base board for your project. I used a couple of scrap pieces{1/4 in. MDF and bead board}. But I think this would look great using a picture frame.

Sandpaper

Glue gun and glue

Wood glue

Green Spray Pain-I used Krylon in Hunter Green

Wood Stain- I used Minwax Dark Walnut

Green Gardening Jute-I bought this at Wal-mart in the hardware section

stiff paper, scissors, and some ribbon for a bow

Start by giving your base board a good coat of paint.While that dries, sand down the bead board to your liking, then give it a quick rub down with the stain.

Sand the edges on the base board and give them a quick brush with the stain too.

Once they are both dry, use the wood glue to stick them together.

Cut a heart shape from a piece of paper. {I actually cut 3}

Play with the size to be sure it fits into the overall size of your project.

Once you find the right size, trace it 3 times onto your stiff paper, these will make the leaves for your clover.

Cut out the hearts.

With your glue gun and jute, start filling in the heart.

Run a length of glue along the edge and then cover it with the jute. Continue gluing and adding the jute moving in toward the center, until the heart is completely filled being sure to keep the rows close together.

From there I used my best glue gun cursive to add the wording. As I didn't have room for "Kiss Me I'm Irish" and well, I'm not Irish, I opted for the short and sweet...lucky.

I went a letter at a time and totally eyeballed it. If you need to, you could draw it out with pencil first, or use vinyl, or stickers, or just have a clover!

Last, add a bow for a splash of color and you're done!

One super fast, easy and cute St. Patrick's Day decor piece ready to display.

There will be no pinching at my house this year!

Just in case your wondering, you can find the other pieces in the pictures at my shop ...Well Good!

***So as much as I liked this, I wasn't 100% happy with how it looked on my mantle. I decided I needed smaller pieces so I omitted the wording and just did the clover and LOVE it! Just another option***

The ideas, recipes, tutorials, and documents posted on this blog are for PERSONAL USE ONLY! I would love to have you share something you see here but please DO NOT copy posts in their entirity. Instead, post a picture or two and provide a link back to Craft Goodies. Photos on this blog are the property of Craft Goodies unless otherwise noted. Thanks for playing nicely!